10:45 pmThe clerks at my local pharmacy are two friendly 40-something Coptic Christian women from Egypt or thereabouts, who spend their time joking with the regulars or each other, depending on how busy it is. But Saturdays there's a young Asian guy (Chinese-Canadian or Korean-Canadian, going by the features) who spends his time between customers reading. Today he was deep in the Penguin edition of The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies by Clark Ashton Smith. So of course I had to ask him about it, since it's been half a century since I read any Smith and I wasn't impressed then. Lumped in with Eddison as a wordy man, and with Lovecraft as an incoherent one.

My guy agreed, pretty much: 'You get to the end of a story and say "and then...?"' Indeed. Somehow I seem to have misplaced the horror of these horror stories, and jeez Louise but all you guys have been mainlining Lautréamont. Oddly, in view of the prolixity, the majority of the 4 and 5 star reviews at Goodreads come from guys.